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In the case of twin birth among human beings how can we make
out the Reason-Principles to be different; and still more when we
turn to the animals and especially those with litters?
Where the young are precisely alike, there is one
Reason-Principle.
But this would mean that after all there are not as many Reason
Principles as separate beings?
As many as there are of differing beings, differing by something
more than a mere failure in complete reproduction of their Idea.
And why may not this [sharing of archetype] occur also in beings
untouched by differentiation, if indeed there be any such?
A craftsman even in constructing an object identical with a model
must envisage that identity in a mental differentiation enabling
him to make a second thing by bringing in some difference side by
side with the identity: similarly in nature, where the thing
comes about not by reasoning but in sole virtue of
Reason-Principles, that differentiation must be included in the
archetypal idea, though it is not in our power to perceive the
difference.
The consideration of Quantity brings the same result:
If production is undetermined in regard to Quantity, each thing
has its distinct Reason-Principle: if there is a measured system
the Quantity has been determined by the unrolling and unfolding
of the Reason-Principles of all the existences.
Thus when the universe has reached its term, there will be a
fresh beginning, since the entire Quantity which the Kosmos is to
exhibit, every item that is to emerge in its course, all is laid
up from the first in the Being that contains the
Reason-Principles.
Are we, then, looking to the brute realm, to hold that there are
as many Reason-Principles as distinct creatures born in a litter?
Why not? There is nothing alarming about such limitlessness in
generative forces and in Reason-Principles, when Soul is there to
sustain all.
As in Soul [principle of Life] so in Divine Mind [principle of
Idea] there is this infinitude of recurring generative powers;
the Beings there are unfailing.
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